


So Special

by Dashboardjuliet



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 21:11:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21204164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dashboardjuliet/pseuds/Dashboardjuliet
Summary: Nahri thinks of Dara in her spare time





	So Special

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by So Special by MUNA

She hates to admit it, but she loves her private orange grove. It’s a funny thing, to love a place in this city that has been nothing but grief for her, but she truly does feel joy over her small grove of trees. The scent of citrus is always heavy in the air, covering any scent that the city and palace otherwise provides. Even the clinical smell of her surgery is completely covered, and it’s a scent that she thought she would never be able to fully remove from her skin. 

The mangroves are thick, as thick as the scent, and she appreciates the cover that it gives her, because in this seclusion, hidden from eyes that she can’t see, and protected from a city that’s taken more from her than she would have cared to give, Nahri is not the Banu Nahida. She is just Nahri. She’s no one special, and in that unspecialness, she takes her first deep breath of the day. 

The air is still chilled from the night when she inhales, holding the breath in her chest for a moment before releasing it back into the space around her. It is a bit chilly still, she thinks, wrapping the gauzy thing that had been laid out as a shawl for her around her form a bit tighter. It’ll be perfect, she thinks, for when the sun is high in the sky, but in the early morning where the sky is barely light, it’s just not enough. Stars are still out, brilliant and unfamiliar to her even after two years in the city, and over the tops of her trees, she can almost see the night being taken away. It’ll be morning soon, she thinks, and people will be looking for her. There’s never a shortage of patients for her to see, Nisreen will have something for her to read and she’s certain that Ghassan will want to see her with Muntadhir at some point, their sham of a marriage still keeping her prisoner. 

But in between the quiet of the dying night and the birth of the morning, she thinks of Dara. 

She doesn’t allow herself to think of him often, the grief of him still too fresh and raw, bursting from her chest like an arrow strike. Nisreen had allowed her some wallowing, but drawn the line when she deemed it had been enough. So she stopped actively been sad in her presence, or in anyone’s presence for that matter, saved her grieving for private. 

She can still see him, feel him, she thinks, if she tries hard enough. Still see those green eyes of his peering at her, the tattoo flexing along with the widening or narrowing of them, the sneaking suspicion of a smirk on his lips only for her. The cold metal of his ring on her cheekbone when his hands cupped her cheeks, fingers dancing over her face. 

She wants to speak into his skin, press her lips into the palms of his hands and let her words leave their make on his skin. To whisper, I have loved you Dara, since the moment I met you. That I was always bound to love you, since the day you were created. That she loves him, not the Banu Nahida, but Nahri, the thief from Cairo with a strange knack for languages and a penchant for conning people out of money. That she’s the one who loves him. 

He would never accept it, she thinks, but he would smile, and his smile would be permission enough. Enough for her to kiss him, mold her lips against his like her life depended on it, like they were always meant to be connected like that. Enough that he would kiss her back, and wrap his arms around her waist to hold her close, to hide her from all of this nonsense. The press of him on her would be warm, overstimulating and wonderful. She would never be cold again with him in her bed, so unlike her current bedroom companion when he chooses to spend the night with her. He would stay, too. He wouldn’t leave in the middle of the night, spirited away. He’d stay, wrap his arms right around the skin of her waist, fingers hooking around her hips to pull her close back to him. In the quiet of just them, of their breathing, she would lose herself in him, and do so gladly. 

She wouldn’t be so alone, or at least feel so alone, with him there. Even if he didn’t love her the same way, bound to some old stupid order that she was almost positive would never have applied to her anyways, he would have still been there. Stayed by her side in all matters, and not allowed himself to be… taken away. 

It’s in that moment, Nahri realizes she is crying. Becoming too common of an occurrence, she thinks, especially when it comes to thinking about Dara. They’re gentle tears, rolling down her cheeks to drop from her chin onto the cream colored abaya that she’s wearing, making the fabric a shade or two darker. 

“Banu Nahida?” Nisreen calls from just outside her grove, obeying Nahri’s rule of no one in the space but her, and it’s like a switch in her turns back on. Being sad, feeling her mourning the way she probably should if she wants to properly heal, is no longer an option for her to spend her day. It takes a few good deep breaths, and scrubbing at her cheeks to dry them, before Nahri feels that she’s presentable enough. She’s sure that she looks a mess, eyes puffy and cheeks rubbed red with tear marks still drying on her clothes, but it will have to be enough. She’s enough. Maybe. 

“Time to go?” She asks, wiping her hands on her skirts. Nisreen stands on the outskirts of her grove, just outside the boundary of her space. She nods her head. 

“There’s a man whose leg was crushed and it seems to be not healing properly.”

Just like that, her day begins, and she leaves any thoughts of Dara with the oranges.


End file.
